Black Mamba Boy

Black Mamba Boy is a 2010 novel by the Somali-British author Nadifa Mohammed. The novel is a semi-autobiographical account of her father's life in Yemen in the 1930s and 40s, during the colonial period through a character called Jama.

Quotes

• It’s hard to avenge yourself on someone you fear, when everything about them, their height, power, possessions, confidence, imposes a sense of your own inferiority. Even a child’s imagination shrinks in the presence of terror.
  • Page 149. Speaking on avenging oneself against someone you fear, respect.

• Unfortunate civilians and askaris carried the livid geography of lashes on their backs. The Italians used hippopotamus skin because the tough hide cut through human skin like a razor. One hundred lashes were enough to kill a strong, healthy man, and they were generous with the blows.
  • Page 147. Jama's narration on the cruel treatment civilians faced.

• They want you to step into the gutter when they approach, say master this and master that…That’s the way here, it’s not a life but it’s better than death…the longer you stay, the less of a man you become
  • Page 122. Speaking on how new soldiers are expected to behave around the generals.

• When you go to Eritrea, you will see even more clearly, there are Ferengis who think that you don’t feel pain like them, have dreams like them, love life as much as them. It’s a bad world we live in, you’re like a flea riding a dog’s back, eventually you will end between its teeth.
  • Page 96. Speaking on Eritrea.

• Despite the beauty of her words, Jama felt his mother was threading pearl after pearl of expectation into a noose that would sit loosely around his neck, ready for her to hang him one day.
  • Page 13. Jama's thought on his mother.

• If you want to make every decision for me, what’s the point of being alive? You might as well live both our lives for us.
  • Page 207. Speaking on the freedom of making one's own decision.